Gaming board faults Big Bullets on raffle draw
The Malawi Gaming Board has said Big Bullets FC’s raffle draw was illegal as the club did not follow the board’s lottery procedures.
The board’s director of legal services, Ofwa Alide, told The Nation in a telephone interview yesterday that Bullets risks legal action if they fail to address issues the board has raised with them.
“When you are conducting a lottery, there is a procedure whereby you are supposed to come to the board to fill in forms where you indicate duration, prizes and dates for the draw, then we advise the applicant accordingly.
“In Bullets’ case, they did not inform us about their plans to have one. One of our colleagues contacted them when we read about it in the press and they were asked to come and get a form to regularise everything, but they did not,” said Alide.
She said when Bullets announced that they would conduct a draw, “[Our] colleague called them again and we advised them to suspend the exercise, but, unfortunately, they went ahead.”
Alide said Bullets are supposed to get back to the board with the list of names that were drawn as well as forms.
Asked what will be the consequences in the event that Bullets fail to comply, Alide said: “We have a legal mandate to seek legal redress. We did that with other institutions before.”
However, Bullets executive committee member Dan Mbebuwa, who was in the raffle draw organising committee, yesterday claimed that the board was informed about the exercise.
“They were aware. The only thing they told me was to provide them with the list of names and the prizes and I was supposed to do that yesterday [Monday], only that I was preoccupied with other things.
“We got in touch with the board and we paid the required fee the day before we started,” Mbebuwa said.
Ten lucky supporters from the draw were supposed to accompany the team to Limpopo Province, South Africa, a trip which has since been put on hold. Other winners were supposed to get assorted electrical gadgets as consolation prizes.
Mbebuwa and treasurer Noel Lipipa asked for time to reconcile the revenue realised from the raffle draw.
